INTERTWINED CULTURES: DEVON AVENUE, CHICAGO

Devon Avenue is a street that is in a state of constant flux. Waves of immigrants and cultural groups move through this neighborhood as they settle into life in the United States. Newly arrived Russians, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Mexicans and Central Americans live and work on this street while spectral remains of Jewish residents and Luxembourgian farmers remind us of a culturally diverse past. Older buildings and businesses, many now reused, establish social and economic anchors in the neighborhood. Upstairs, tucked away from the sidewalks are social service institutions — medical practices, tailors, and professional services—catering to elderly, women and children. The side streets open up to new worlds with places of worship, travel agencies, storage spaces and smaller businesses. Crowds come to Devon Avenue from an extended Greater Chicago area in search for a place to eat or shop. Music and laughter reverberate into the wee hours of the night from social clubs where local teens and young adults meet.

Devon Avenue’s complexly transcultural and multi-layered sense of place can be captured neither by a snapshot study of buildings and landscapes nor by a sociological study of its people. Instead, this project suggests a multipronged strategy where time becomes a central unit of analysis as we unpack the social and spatial complexity of this thoroughfare. The topography and soil constitution of this region—a consideration that acknowledges the long duration of geographic time — allow us to situate the geography of this street and its subsequent human settlement. Thinking of historical time helps us unpack the material culture of this street, ranging from the architecture produced since the 1920s, the landscape of parks and green spaces carved into this neighborhood and the more recent buildings built by Jewish and South Asian immigrants. But we also encourage you to experience a sense of time and place that is more immediate and intimate, produced by the daily rhythms of the street. The latter involves an embodied and affective understanding of the interiors of the stores, the use of the street as public space, and the subtle marking of class, religion and gender that sorts the landscape of Devon into sub-territories. We invite you to experience the cognitive and symbolic boundaries experienced by practicing Jews who mark the landscape though a construct called the eruvim and the prayer spaces tucked inside many Muslim-owned stores.